It is 5:02am.  My son has just begun to sleep all the way from 8:00pm to 4:00am and for the first time in five months (let’s be honest – longer – sleeping from seven months pregnant onwards was hit and miss) we are getting between five and six hours sleep in a row, which suddenly seems like ample sufficiency after the months of waking up every 2-3 hours. I, therefore, am very awake and ready to start my day, and have been mulling over some of the reactions to the recent Schools Week article that featured The MTPT Project.  One person referred to the concept of completing CPD on parental leave as ‘satire’ – as an English teacher, I enjoyed this very much – another as ‘bizarre’.  Some, whilst appreciating the sentiments of the project, questioned its workable reality, and others worried about the project’s impact on the ‘hard won right’ of maternity and paternity leave. The latter really got me thinking: parental leave is a hard won right, and parenting – like teaching – is a very personal and individual experience.  I have very few solid opinions on things, but there are two things I am very clear about:

1. Nobody – not your employer, not a baby book, not your NCT group, not your mother-in-law (!) – has any right to tell you what to do on your parental leave or how to parent;
2. The absolute focus of parental leave and parenting should be the wellbeing of the child and the parent.

As a teacher, I love to learn, and what better topic to learn about at this stage in my life at, now 5:20 in the morning, than the history of this hard won right of parental leave.  It makes for fascinating reading, with most sources citing the start of this journey in 1911 (no wonder Eva Smith had such a hard time!), and agreeing that, with only statutory pay being offered to fathers through shared parental leave, we still have some way to go before this right empowers gender equality. Sweden, unsurprisingly, have lead the way at being awesome since 1974 and as teachers employed by schools that adhere to the Burgundy Book policy, we are considerably more fortunate than other sectors who abide by government guidelines.  Now I might be young and naïve, but what is shocking to me is that it wasn’t until 1993 that all working women became entitled to any sort of maternity pay – a hard won right, indeed! What got me thinking, though, since reading this response to the original Schools Week article, and then lying in bed awake, pretending to sleep, because that’s what ‘normal’ mothers ‘should’ do when their child begins to sleep through the night, was what rights, exactly, had been hard won. There are some very clear, legal rights in the form of duration of job protection and pay, KIT days, protection from discrimination, paid antenatal care and adapted working conditions during pregnancy.  Some companies also do very well at considering the informal cultures surrounding parental leave, with best practice encouraging transparency, inclusion and agreed means and frequency of contact and involvement. The question of what rights this hard won maternity leave have afforded me, therefore, are very clear and welcome on paper, but what about in reality? In reality, because these rights have been so hard won, it is easy to forget that they are rights that enable parents to choose and make decisions that are best for them and their families. It is a fact that, especially in the early months, many parents would struggle to effectively maintain a full time teaching load – women especially, both because of the physical consequences of labour, and because of our UK culture of placing the majority of the childcare responsibility on mothers.  Sleep deprivation, or erratic sleeping patterns, as well as appointments with the midwife, the health visitor and the doctor all mean that logistically, being in the classroom is nigh-on impossible, and this isn’t even starting on the psychological and developmental needs of a newborn to be very close to their primary care givers at what seems like every single moment of the waking and dormant day. It is a hard earned right that this reduced capacity is recognised without implications of gender-based physical or mental inferiority; it is a hard earned right that the realities of these logistics are accommodated and financially supported, but is it a hard earned right for every parent to spend this time adhering to a set of ‘one-size-fits-all’ expectations? Is it a ‘right’, for example, for parents to feel that they are ‘not allowed’ to partake in professional or intellectual activities despite the fact that – for them – their wellbeing is intrinsically tied to their professional identity? Is it a ‘right’ to insist that parents forgo a family outing to reflect on the historical context of KS4 set texts at a local museum instead of going to Stretch and Sing if – frankly – the concept of Stretch and Sing makes them want to gouge their eyes out?  Must we figure out how to tune these questions out?  Where is the off switch for my interior, English-teacher voice? What if a parent can’t sleep when the baby sleeps?  Is it their ‘right’ to assume a horizontal position instead of reading Mary Myatt’s (very accessible) High Challenge, Low Threat, providing quiet time, instead, to reflect despairingly on what they perceive to be the gradual erosion of their mental capacities? Is their something wrong with these parents?  Are they mad?  Are they broken?  Are they damaging and dangerous?  Are they bad parents because they are doing what is right for them and their child? I think you get the point, which is that wellbeing means different things for different people, and the one right that we do not have as parents, is to tell others how they should and should not be using their hard won maternity or paternity leave. What is true, however, is that this individual choice is all well and good but, in a capitalist county, society, policy holders and the government have a tendency to maximise on profit-making trends.  If one parent, for example, can complete an MA whilst on parental leave… then why can’t all parents do this – with minimal pay, no support and a whole heap of internal and external expectations?  Thus begins the slow descent into an apocalypse of abolished parental leave and enforced labour at – what is for some – the most vulnerable time in their lives. If teachers want to complete CPD on parental leave, are they entitled to do so, but is it morally inconsiderate for them to talk about it, or use it to impact student outcomes?  Does it even count as CPD, if it doesn’t impact students?  If you think so, please tell us in one of our surveys. Call me dangerously optimistic, but I believe that this concept of inspiring, empowering and connecting those parents who choose to complete CPD whilst on parental leave has the potential for very powerful consequences.  Allow me to hypothesise:

• Currently, women still make up the majority of those who take extended parental leave.

• Some of those women are interested in using maternity leave as a professional opportunity to complete CPD at a pace and in directions that interest them and suit their new circumstances as mothers. Some are not.  All of these women should be allowed to do whatever the heck they want without judgement or restriction.

• Are those who complete this CPD more likely to stay in the classroom where they can support colleagues through the huge transition of pregnancy, parental leave and the return to work? I don’t know, but The MTPT Project has started the primary research that will help us to figure this out.

• Are those who complete this CPD more likely to secure leadership positions in the future, faster, and more effectively, than if they had spent their leave feeling lost and frustrated? I don’t know, but you can complete a survey to help us find out.

• If there are more women, and more parents, in leadership positions, will these mean more decision makers empathetic of the realities of parental leave and family life? When decisions come up about flexible working hours, extended paternity leave, job shares, childcare and work life balance for staff bodies, instead of a ‘Boys’ Club’ SLT of single, 30-something-year-olds, will there therefore be someone pointing out the benefits of accommodating teaching parents and suggesting creative solutions?  I don’t know, but there’s a survey for that, too!

One comment responding to the Schools Week article suggested that the problems of teaching, as a career incompatible with family life, didn’t start at maternity leave, but rather when parents returned to work, and this seems to be the loudest consensus.  The loudest voice, however, isn’t always representative of the nuances of reality. Whilst founding The MaternityTeacher PaternityTeacher Project, I have spoken time and time again to parents – mostly mothers – who talk of their maternity leave as a time of huge frustration, boredom, a period of absence that left them overwhelmed when they returned, and disengaged with the education system.  They felt forgotten and their self esteem plummeted.  They lost confidence, both personally and professionally, and some talk about serious bouts of mental health associated with a loss of identity and purpose.  For these women, the problem very much, definitely started with maternity leave… and there’s a survey for you, too! Equally, however, some of those who were able to complete CPD on parental leave because it was their choice and inclination to do so, felt judged, derided, belittled, marginalised.  Nobody wants to be accused of being a bad parent, and statements that label individual decisions as satirical, bizarre or dismiss them as unrealistic, form a very powerful, silencing voice that has an immediate detrimental impact on the teachers who choose to complete CPD on parental leave. The psychological consequences are complex: one attempts to assert autonomy over one’s own life to constructively address these feelings of powerlessness, only to be shamed and ridiculed, the result of which is to stay quiet about the CPD completed, rather than sharing it with colleagues and students, leading to frustrations and confusion around value and self-worth when returning to the classroom. With a lack of data on teachers’ experiences, however, what is less obvious is the detrimental impact such assertions will have on those parents who choose not to complete CPD whilst on leave.  Instead, therefore, of shackling ourselves to the idea of honouring the difficult journey that has lead us to the rights we have today by allowing this right to become a restriction, let’s move forward, empowering a parent’s right to choose, so that – allied – we can improve standards for everybody. It’s 7:02am.  My son has just woken up and is making very cute noises.  As a mother and a teacher on maternity leave, having completed 2 hours of CPD, I am ready for coffee and cuddles.